Swedish company in court for historic toxic spill

The Court of First Instance number 11 of Seville will begin the trial today against the Swedish company Boliden for the toxic spill from the Aznalcóllar mine, which occurred in April 1998, considered the greatest ecological disaster in Andalusia and for which the prosecution requests almost 90 million euro in compensation.

The trial will take place in six sessions that will be held on July 4, 6, 11 and 13, with the possibility of extending the dates if necessary, and will have the testimony of twelve witnesses and an expert proposed by the three companies that they are part of Boliden (Boliden Apirsa, Boliden AB and Boliden BV), all of them sued, as indicated in the preview last September.

The trial will be held after the preliminary hearing, after failing to reach an agreement, the parties present the corresponding evidence and defend their positions in the conflict, in which the Board claims 89,867,545 euro from the mining company for damages caused.

The lawyers for the autonomous Administration maintained that they are legitimated and that they have the “legal obligation” to claim this amount in accordance with the Mining Law, while the company assures that the Board spent half of the money it claims in “a green corridor “and not in mitigating the consequences of the spill.

The Board presented an extensive expert report on the environmental restoration carried out in the area that was challenged by Boliden, considering that it had been carried out by officials of the regional government itself, that is, an interested party in the procedure, and that the judge finally did not admit.

The legal representation of the Board argues that with the fracture of the mining complex pond, five million cubic metres of mud were spilled that reached the Doñana environment, there were 37 tons of dead fish and 4,400 hectares were affected, for which it claims almost 90 million euro for cleaning.

For its part, the mining company defends that the Andalusian Government authorised in 1996 the regrowth of the pool that later broke and that they removed the sludge “voluntarily”, something that cost them 80 million euro and was not covered by insurance.

The claim of the invoice to the Swedish group that exploited the mine then has been in a “judicial pilgrimage” for almost 25 years – this is how the Supreme Court defined it – which in 2015 returned to the starting point.

The criminal proceedings -by which a court in Sanlúcar la Mayor came to charge some twenty technicians from Boliden, the Junta and the Ministry of the Environment- was closed soon (in 2000 the court archived it and the Seville Court confirmed it in 2001).

The Board then filed a civil lawsuit that fell in the investigating court 11 of Seville, which in 2002 rejected it, declaring itself incompetent (the Court confirmed it in 2003).

Given this, in 2004, the Governing Council agreed to impose a fine of 89 million on Boliden to be able to demand it through contentious-administrative proceedings, but the mining group appealed and both the TSJA (in 2007) and the Supreme Court (2011) they gave the reason.

Once all avenues were closed, the Board asked the Supreme Court for Conflicts of Competences how it could demand the money from Boliden and it ruled that by civil means and ordered the case to be returned to Court 11 of Seville, which investigated the first claim and that he has now set a trial date for next year.

The toxic flood affected 4,634 hectares, advanced more than 60 km and was stopped three days later, in Entremuros, where a dam was built to prevent the spill from entering Doñana.

The dam extended 28 km downstream the so-called “Montaña del Río”, an earthen wall built in the 1980s by rice farmers to defend crops from the saline tide that rises from the Guadalquivir.

The actions of the Junta de Andalucía and the central government to recover the area included the removal of sludge, forced expropriations, control and waterproofing of the Doñana Marsh, technical assistance, decontamination study, environmental and river bank restoration actions Guadiamar and groundwater control.

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